War dames: if America invades Iraq, thousands of female U.S. soldiers will fight on the front lines

Washington Monthly, Dec, 2002 by Phillip Carter

Indeed, during the Gulf War, critics' worst predictions proved unfounded: Women did not flee combat in disproportionate numbers, nor did their units collapse under the stresses generated by their presence. The military consensus is that most women performed well. And various studies of mixed-gender units have shown that cohesion was not a problem--both in exercises at the National Training Center and in actual combat. (The critical variable in unit cohesion proved to be not gender, but such differentials as the unit leader's time in command and the length of time the troops had spent together.)

The presence of female troops did create something of a bureaucratic nightmare. Before units could leave for the Gulf, hundreds of women had to be transferred out for administrative reasons. Some were pregnant and thus ineligible for combat deployment. But many others were transferred out because their commanders were unsure whether the risk rule permitted them to be taken into combat. Likewise, many women had problems arranging for childcare during their deployments, especially in families where both parents served. In most such situations, commanders ordered the men to war and found ways to transfer or discharge the women. But all these problems revealed more about the ambiguity of the risk rule--and the military's ability to accommodate soldiers with children--than it did about women's fitness for combat.

Major Mom

While the Panama and Gulf engagements put female soldiers to the test, other pressures were building. Many female officers who had joined the service in the 1970s were complaining by the 1980s that the long roster of restrictions was limiting the range of command posts they could be assigned to. Because getting ever bigger and better command assignments is the key to military promotion, they rightly felt their careers were being unfairly stymied. "Women can make sergeant major with a lot of hard work and no combat experience; they can't make general as easily," observes Charles Moskos, a sociologist at Northwestern University who has studied the military for 30 years. As a result, it's largely female officers who have pushed the liberalizing of women's combat roles.

In response to the Gulf War, the Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services moved to open up a wide range of military occupations to women. When Bill Clinton became president, the committee's more activist members and their allies in the military found a kindred spirit in the White House. Suddenly, high-level Pentagon officials were more receptive to recommendations for opening combat roles to women. Key members of Congress, who had watched women perform well in the Gulf, were also more supportive. Through their efforts, Congress repealed the combat exclusion laws in 1992. Two years later, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin revised the risk rule in favor of a "Direct Combat Probability Code" ("DCPC" in Pentagon-speak) that measured risk more narrowly--by unit, not by geography--and created thousands of new opportunities" for women by allowing them into all positions but those most likely to see ground combat: the "trigger puller" front-line formations such as infantry, armor, artillery, and Special Forces.